1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus, and more particularly to an image forming apparatus having a door on a side surface of an apparatus body.
2. Description of Related Art
An electrophotographic image forming apparatus, for example, a coping machine or a printer has a feed section in a lower part of an apparatus body, and a (vertical) sheet path (and a sheet reversing path for double-side printing, if necessary) or a manual feed section in a side part of the apparatus body. There are many prior art documents that disclose this kind of image forming apparatuses, and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 7-219286, Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2002-148881 and Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publication No. 2005-138967 are typical examples of these prior art documents.
When such an image forming apparatus has a plurality of doors that incorporate various components of sheet paths, the apparatus has the following disadvantages: a large number of positioning mechanisms for positioning the respective doors relative to the apparatus body are necessary; it is likely that the components of the sheet paths may be out of alignment, which causes sheet skew and sheet displacement and which lowers the sheet feeding performance, resulting in degradation of the picture quality; and a user is required to do many things to treat a paper jam.
Meanwhile, it is possible to provide only one door, not a plurality of doors, on a side surface of the apparatus body. However, when the door is too large, the door is likely to be deformed, and it is necessary to provide a lock mechanism for securing the door closed. In this case, further, misdetection of the open/closed state of the door may occur, and it is necessary to provide a mechanism for closing the door without fail.